SkyQ (FlightQ)

SkyQ is the flight route game in FlightQ, a set of free daily geography and aviation games that runs in the browser and as an app for iPhone and Android. The puzzles come from real scheduled airline data, so every answer is a route that is actually flown.

A new set goes up at midnight Eastern Time: an easy, a medium and a hard flight, the same for every player. Easy picks from 50 of the busiest routes in the world, Medium from 500 scheduled routes, and Hard from the whole day's schedule, so regional and seasonal flights can turn up. On the Easy board we played, one end of the route was already given (Amsterdam), leaving only the other airport to find.

Each puzzle opens with two facts: how long the flight takes and which aircraft flies it. You type a departure and an arrival airport, by city, country, IATA or ICAO code, from a list of a few hundred real airports. A wrong airport is marked with how far away it is from the right one, in miles, and each miss unlocks a further clue: domestic or international, then the direction of travel, then the airline, then the flight path. You have five guesses to get both ends right.

Results can be shared as an emoji grid, streaks and stats are kept, and past puzzles and answers are in an archive. No account is needed for the daily; a free account syncs streaks across devices and opens group games and leaderboards, and a paid Premium removes the ads and adds unlimited practice.

It suits aviation fans and frequent flyers who can turn a flight time and a plane type into a likely route, and geography players who like closing in on an answer by distance.